please help. poor quality dvd rip?

[lilsting10]

The DVD that has come, when ripped onto PC using Magic DVD Ripper (ripped using the "avi high quality" setting) has resulted in an output file which has motion blur on movement, is somewhat washed-out and yellow-tinted, and appears to have a less wide camera view field (as if the sides have been cut off) than the partial episode I found on YouTube.

The ripping process did receive a read error, but allowed me to continue since it was a brand new disc with no scratches and no copy protection. I'm completely open to using better ripping software, and if someone can point me towards better ripping profile settings (quality, framerate etc.)

I have no idea how the person did the DVDs themselves, apart from a box that showed up in the first few seconds, where he appears to copy the DVD to his HDD.

http://imgur.com/L4nIKxZ

http://imgur.com/TSK4bfX

[manono]

First, you didn't 'rip' it. You converted it to an AVI. To be able to help we'd need to have an untouched sample from the source DVD.

If you don't know how to cut a 10-second piece from the source, open a VOB in DGindex (http://www.videohelp.com/software/DGMPGDec). Scroll to a place with movement. Use the [ and ] buttons to section off a small piece (again, 10 seconds is all that's needed). Then go File->Save Project and Demux Video. Make available the resulting M2V file. You can upload it here or to a file-sharing site such as MediaFire.

[lilsting10]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/zlufckfgjhbuezu/VTS_01_1.demuxed.m2v

Edit: Please ignore the talk above about yellow-ish output file. The same output file is normal-colored on a different laptop, so that's probably something going-on with color temporature of the other machine.

[manono]

It's phase-shifted. It doesn't need to be deinterlaced but just have the fields realigned. It's like this, where the top fields are the capital letters and the bottom fields are the small letters. Ordinarily the top and bottom fields that belong together are in the same frame like so:

A B C D E F G
a b c d e f g

In yours the fields are out of alignment and the whole thing looks interlaced, which it isn't, really:

A B C D E F G
b c d e f g h

It's nothing your Magic DVD Ripper can fix, but it's a simple matter using TFM from the TIVTC (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/TIVTC) filter. TFM() puts everything right and makes your video progressive again without deinterlacing it. In the TIVTC page to which I linked, down at the bottom the first of the PAL example is how a video like yours should be treated. There are other all-in-one encoders such as MeGUI that allow you to edit the AviSynth scripts they create to do something like this.

[hello_hello]

lilsting10,
I replied to your PM.
Here's some instructions for you. Hopefully you've already downloaded MeGUI (http://www.videohelp.com/software/MeGUI) and updated it, and copied the DVD to your hard drive. I'm using your sample here, but you should be able to open the first vob file in the set from the DVD. If there DVD isn't split into a set of vob files per episode, you may need instructions for doing so, but for the moment....

Open the first vob file (or your sample) with MeGUI's File/Open menu. MeGUI should ask how you want to open it. Choose the file indexer. When it opens, click the queue button to add the indexing job to the queue. Switch to MeGUI's Queue tab and run it. When it's done, which shouldn't take long, MeGUI's script creator should open with a preview. For your sample, you should see something like this:

http://s32.postimg.org/6fcbdlxhh/megui_1.jpg

To make it easier, I'm posting pictures of how I'd set up cropping and resizing in MeGUI's script creator. There's more than one way to do it, but here's one of them. I've reduced the resolution a little to reduce the file size as I don't think it'll cost you any picture detail:

http://s32.postimg.org/nhs4cev9h/megui_2.gif

Switch to the Filters tab, enable de-interlacing, and set it up like this (you won't be de-interlacing, it's just a shortcut for adding needed stuff to the script):

http://s32.postimg.org/ayfvki62t/megui_3.gif

Switch to the Script tab. It mightn't be exactly the same, and the paths to the dlls will probably be different, but with any luck the contents of the script will look something like this:

http://s32.postimg.org/8z06vu9mt/megui_4.gif

What you need to do is manually modify the contents (it's because MeGUI doesn't have a setting in the GUI for fixing your problem). If you change anything in the script creator GUI after modifying the contents of the Script tab, MeGUI will re-write the script and you'll lose your changes, so do it last. You need to find this line:

tfm(order=-1).tdecimate(hybrid=3)

and remove the .tdecimate part (including the dot before tdecimate), so you're left with this:

http://s32.postimg.org/rpub0n491/megui_5.gif

Finally, if you click the "Preview AVS Script" button at the bottom of the script creator and all is well, the preview should change to something like this:

http://s32.postimg.org/dmmsb2urp/megui_6.jpg

From there you can save the script and it'll be loaded into MeGUI's video section for encoding. I know I haven't explained how any of that works, and there's still more to set up (video and/or audio encoders) and still the actual encoding to do, but if you get that far someone (or I) will be able to help you further from there if need be. I don't think there's any simple "1 click" ripping and encoding type program that'll do a good job with that particular DVD.

There's not much more you can do with the Avisynth plugins that come with MeGUI (as far as modifying the picture quality goes), but there's a whole plethora of Avisynth plugins if you want to learn how to install them and add them to a script yourself. They may help clean up the video a bit (it's fairly low quality and seems quite compressed). It'll probably involve a fair learning curve though.

I'd add some extra filtering and encode it like the sample I've linked to below. There's not a huge difference, but it's an improvement. Keep in mind the DVD quality isn't great. Someone else may be able to offer some clever ideas for improving it, but you'd need to want to spend some time on it.... mostly learning how to do it. :)

VTS_01_1.encoded.mkv (http://www.filedropper.com/vts011encoded)

[vrpatilisl]

Simply use vidcoder and use crf of 18. U get good quality and good size.

[hello_hello]

Simply use vidcoder and use crf of 18. U get good quality and good size.

The video has out of phase fields (it's not actually interlaced). Can Vidcoder/Handbrake fix that? The decomb filter does field matching so maybe they can. I'll test it later.... out of curiosity.
It's best not to de-interlace it though because it's not really interlaced.

[Ghitulescu]

First, you didn't 'rip' it. You converted it to an AVI.
This is my opinion, too and I tried to make this known as many times as I can.

However, the long practice of copying DVDs into AVIs, where this process was called RIPPING, is hard to be forgotten. This non-sense is propagated by the myriad of XYZ Super Converter from Everything Into Everything :)

The DVD that has come, when ripped onto PC using Magic DVD Ripper (ripped using the "avi high quality" setting) has resulted in an output file which has motion blur on movement, is somewhat washed-out and yellow-tinted, and appears to have a less wide camera view field
...
I'm completely open to using better ripping software, and if someone can point me towards better ripping profile settings (quality, framerate etc.)
Any particular interest why you want to do a reprocessing into an outdated format?
Just copy/paste it to your HDD, if it has no copy protection.
I have no idea how the person did the DVDs themselves, apart from a box that showed up in the first few seconds, where he appears to copy the DVD to his HDD.
If it's your HDD and his DVD, there might be a problem, Houston.

[hello_hello]

Simply use vidcoder and use crf of 18. U get good quality and good size.

The video has out of phase fields (it's not actually interlaced). Can Vidcoder/Handbrake fix that? The decomb filter does field matching so maybe they can. I'll test it later.... out of curiosity.
It's best not to de-interlace it though because it's not really interlaced.

I'm still using Handbrake 0.9.9. Without the Decomb filter enabled the result wasn't great. With it enabled (set to default) it was apparently field matching as the output looked fine. I set the output to "same as source", "constant frame rate". So for lilsting10, Vidcoder/Handbrake will probably be easier than MeGUI.

Then again.... forget what I just said for the moment....
I checked Handbrake's log file for signs of de-interlacing, and I thought I'd check something else while I was at it. Probably good that I did. Would you believe Handbrake's Decomb filter behaves differently when using a different x264 speed preset. Or it certainly seems to. Unexpected.....

For the UltraFast x264 speed preset, the log file says this:
[04:15:09] Title is likely interlaced or telecined (8 out of 10 previews). You should do something about that.
combing detected, may be interlaced or telecined

For the medium x264 speed preset, with all other Handbrake settings the same:
[04:36:40] decomb: deinterlaced 457 | blended 0 | unfiltered 28 | total 485
[04:36:40] render: 485 frames output, 0 dropped and 0 duped for CFR/PFR

Bummer. The output looks okay though. The deinterlacing isn't tragic so maybe Handbrake is still an option, but why does the decomb filter not run when using the UltraFast x264 speed preset?

When opening the encoded video (no de-interlacing) with Avisynth I'm not seeing lots of combing as I do for the source, and I can resize without it ending in a mess, so maybe there was some filed matching going on, but if there was, why for one x264 speed preset and not another?

One last test.... disable the Decomb filter and ran an encode with the medium x264 preset. Result.... the output looks terrible. No magic, behind the scenes field matching happening this time. No warning about combing being detected in the log file either. Handbrake sometimes makes my brain hurt.
Anyone know if there's a custom Decomb option for field matching only without any de-interlacing?